Taken Out to the Wash

Taken Out to the Wash

A Critique of the short film “The Laundromat” by Timothy Melville

By Davin Kimble

“The Laundromat” by Timothy Melville is an interesting take on the “guy gets duped by a pretty woman” story. Men are fallible. We focus sometimes on what we want or what we expect to happen to us instead of seeing what’s right in front of our faces. At least once in our lives a beautiful woman takes us all for a ride, and if we are lucky we’ll get the chance to take that trip more than once. In this story a normal human interaction that can often take months to play out is a lesson told in a few short minutes. Don’t trust a big butt and a smile.

The scene is a Laundromat. The players, an attractive young lady, an attractive young man and an oblivious dude in the background; the snow globe is a gun. The gun changes everything, the gun twists the plot and gives our antagonist some sense of power over her victim; her poor dumbstruck tango. Here we have a woman, standing in a place one might expect a woman to be standing, reading a magazine you might expect any woman doing her wash to be reading, in a place you’d expect a woman to be. The setup is perfect, the visuals in place. We are all thinking, “romantic moment ahead”, grab your tissues or heartstrings or whatever you pull out during these boy meets girl movie moments. But the gun, now the gun changes everything.

It’s a brilliant if dangerous scheme but it works on this guy. But why wouldn’t it? I would be thinking, “There is no way I am handing this gun over to this chick. It’s obvious she put it there”. I would have at the very least unloaded it first. But this guy … this guy is seeing what he wants to see. All he is thinking is, “this is a chance to get to know a beautiful woman” to his detriment. The story stresses this. He continues to do what she asks thinking she is flirting with him. He dances, unsure of himself. He hands over his wallet and makes excuses for the value of his watch, unsure of himself. He has no weapons, no power. Even had I made the mistake of handing over the gun I would have, I believe, come out of that situation a whole lot better, or dead, but I wouldn’t have danced to her tune. She would have had to dance to mine … or kill me. Women love a man with a gun after all but what this guy missed is that he didn’t have the gun anymore, she did and he had no other weapons to work with.

In a way this is a very empowering feminist tale of the balance of power. This woman, slight of build, seemingly soft and potentially vulnerable has balls bigger than a chimpanzee. Buy itself being ballsy is a hell of a leg up, but having a gun to boot, now there is a tipping point in the balance of power that cannot be denied. But she continues to play coy, sweet, teasing him along with a promise that only he believes is real. She holds all of the cards and she is the only one who realizes it. How easily he hands over his wallet, his watch and his heart if he had been given another half a chance. He even offers to go along with her as a hostage, handing her all of his cards, his “guns”, knives and his dignity. He had no guns left. He’s lucky she left him his manhood. Her position and his desire set him up to be robbed in a public Laundromat.

I think that there are lessons in this tale that speak to the human condition. For instance, what about the guy reading the paper in the back? Did he not even hear the word gun? Why on earth did he not look around now and then? Who sits there never once taking in their environment? Too many people is the answer. This guy is the representation of the ignorant bliss so many walk around in. He witnessed a brazen robbery but the sad part is he will never know it. The robbed man witnessed an brilliant scheme but he will never recognize it. I can hear him telling the story. I can see him thinking on it wistfully, wondering if he’ll ever see her again, longing for it, masturbating to it. She was right. Woman love a man with a gun. They love a man with confidence, a sense of brazen fearlessness, a depth of focus and an innate awareness. This film showed me how you can visually realize a depth of emotion, character and sense of story in a very short frame of time. You can leave your audience wondering what came before and what might come after. You can teach them to wonder who these people are and encourage them to create the rest of the story to their little hearts contentment.

The Laundromat